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Cool stuff but I wish I had data that: 1) I could easily paste like that (most of my data is large and too big to be pasted) 2) Since the data I have has been collected under a Privacy Policy, I can't upload it to other sites. But for small jobs of flipping things around, this is a cool app.
as nickb stated, you should add a Privacy Policy as soon as possible. People will definitely hesitate do upload their data to an unknown server.
At the same time, considering that the data work may be large, having this on a server is not too bad of an idea.
What I suggest to you is this - spend a day to make a version of this wrapped in a web browser in a .exe file. Put a price on the .exe, and sell it directly to businesses. It's an easy sell, and it's way more convenient to have a "local" application for a tool like this, than a website.
But if it was an Excel add-on of some kind I bet you could sell it. Maybe to Microsoft. Or, sell the underlying technology to Google Docs. It's got a wow factor that could inspire upgrades or switching.
Anyway I doubt you hadn't thought of that already. Cool stuff.
What market are you going after? Soccer moms managing team phonebooks? Entrepreneurs who have other things to worry about than cleaning up data?
It'd be cool to see see prompts that inspire better uses/structure to your data. E.g. if a company is managing their sales pipeline (as in the dabble db 8 min demo), analyze that data further than excel easily allows.. track how the data changes over time to deliver insights that people wouldn't see by just producing graphs. What common trends exist among sales that actually close? How long does a sale stay on the table before closing? Does this vary by salesperson/location?
It makes sense for people who know little about spreadsheets [like my mom who would manually add dashes to dozens of rows :) ], but they may also be the type who wouldn't think to seek out a web app to help them clean up the data.
I'm probably a poor sample b/c I spend 5-6 hours/day in excel (finance @ tech company).
Color-logo feature is sweet!
But I don't think this is a solution to that problem for most people who have that problem.
My previous job involved a lot of Excel work (so I became fairly good at it) and it also involved interacting with people (often clients) who used Excel occasionally and really werent very proficient at using it. So for simplicity, lets imagine the world of excel users is made up entirely of those two types, and lets call them A and B respectively.
Types As don't need this service - they can do all the things you showed in Excel quickly (using keyboard shortcuts etc), using formatting codes (even though Excel format codes are clunky. eg. SSN format code is: ###-##-####).
Type Bs do need your service. But will they use it? If they use Excel rarely then is it worth the overhead of knowing how to use a separate service (even a simple one)? If they can't figure out how to use Excel codes then are they the type of person who will be interested in exploring new services? (note, this is about the type of person, not about how simple your service is)
OK, so the world of Excel users is not as simple as the A/B world that I describe. There is no doubt another type C somewhere between the two who might value this - but how many of those are there? My gut says 'not many', but I don't have data. Can you describe to me your archetypal customer?
Making this an Excel plug-in might solve this overhead problem somewhat, but even then, the latter issue still remains.
The examples are pretty basic and can be done with 4-5 excel functions and no scripting. Do you guys have any heavier duty examples in the works? What market are you going after? Soccer moms managing team phonebooks? Entrepreneurs who have other things to worry about than cleaning up data? It'd be cool to see see prompts that inspire better uses/structure to your data. E.g. if a company is managing their sales pipeli…
You guys looking for an intern? lol
604/778 numbers, Vancouver Starup? Can it be? You guys looking for an intern? lol
Really cool. I've been waiting for an easy to use spreadsheet app that would let me do this for a while without having to figure out formulas or vbscript. This looks useful and I'll definitely use it as needed in the future. What's your business model for this? Are you just doing advertising or are you also offering a rush fee or maybe charging extra for files over 5MB or something?
It almost certainly won't be advertising, though we'll make it easy to get to Dabble DB from here, which seems to be a good way of monetizing traffic. Otherwise, we're pretty open-minded at this point -- I'd be interested in hearing what people think makes the most sense..
You could keep it as a web service and/or charge to license it to businesses and make residual income off support/updates/installation on their network.